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Hear the thump-thump of your heart beating, feel the in-and-out cycle of your breath and your chest heaving. Music starts here. Yes, starts with a polyrhythmic groove inherent to the natural world that will play endlessly, or for as long as the earth keeps rotating around the sun. Whether it is the wind whistling in the cold nights, tree leaves rustling in a breeze, rain pitter patter-ing onto the ground, or underwater and winged creatures undulating through the thickness of momentum, our world is engulfed in the essence of music: vibration and rhythm—so much so that a list of its instrumental players/sound-makers would extend in obnoxious profundity. Is it any wonder then that music can be felt and understood by everyone (even the hearing-impaired, i.e. Evelyn Glennie, renowned solo percussionist)?

On the evening of October 14^th, Ayumi Ueda reminded a hundred-some music students and audience members of the undeniable power of music to communicate cross-culturally with a recital at the Berklee Performance Center. Ayumi, a vocalist and crystal singing bowl player, came from Tokyo, Japan to study music at Berklee College of Music and “to play with awesome musicians from all over the world.” She shares, “I was so interested in their culture, language, music and background! I really wanted to learn from them and share things that I learned in Japan!” During her time at Berklee, Ayumi formed and organized the musical group Women of the World, initially consisting of seven singer-musicians and a handful of instrumentalists of mixed gender and nationalities whose mission has been to learn, compose, and perform music from various cultures. Ayumi mentioned that because of language and their different cultures, “sometimes we argued but music was the key to connect us again!” She explains, “I made the group because I want to prove that even though we are different, we can work, sing, laugh together and share a beautiful thing in the world, and if we sing together, that already will be a message of World Peace!”

For the recent recital, she assembled an army of singers known as the “World Peace Choir,” made up of fifty women vocalists from forty-six different countries, to amplify the message of her originally modest-sized group. The choir consisted of one to two individuals from each country represented at Berklee. With the help of Yuchiro Kotani’s production skills, each singer’s name and her hometown were projected on a large screen in the background, accompanied by images pulled from National Geographic. This slideshow played during the last song “World in Union,” arranged by a fellow student, Simone Scazzochio. A video message that Yuchiro put together introduced the slideshow of names and images: “We are 50 singers and we represent 46 countries. . . even though we speak different languages and have unique cultural backgrounds, we have a common language. That is music . . .”

To watch more highlights from the recital below, click on this video link.

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Tags: Concert, music, world peace.